The Scarlet Letter eBook

to be murdered. In the Custom-House, as before
in the Old Manse, I had spent three years—­a
term long enough to rest a weary brain: long
enough to break off old intellectual habits, and make
room for new ones: long enough, and too long,
to have lived in an unnatural state, doing what was
really of no advantage nor delight to any human being,
and withholding myself from toil that would, at least,
have stilled an unquiet impulse in me. Then,
moreover, as regarded his unceremonious ejectment,
the late Surveyor was not altogether ill-pleased to
be recognised by the Whigs as an enemy; since his
inactivity in political affairs—­his tendency
to roam, at will, in that broad and quiet field where
all mankind may meet, rather than confine himself
to those narrow paths where brethren of the same household
must diverge from one another—­had sometimes
made it questionable with his brother Democrats whether
he was a friend. Now, after he had won the crown
of martyrdom (though with no longer a head to wear
it on), the point might be looked upon as settled.
Finally, little heroic as he was, it seemed more
decorous to be overthrown in the downfall of the party
with which he had been content to stand than to remain
a forlorn survivor, when so many worthier men were
falling: and at last, after subsisting for four
years on the mercy of a hostile administration, to
be compelled then to define his position anew, and
claim the yet more humiliating mercy of a friendly
one.

Meanwhile, the press had taken up my affair, and kept
me for a week or two careering through the public
prints, in my decapitated state, like Irving’s
Headless Horseman, ghastly and grim, and longing to
be buried, as a political dead man ought. So
much for my figurative self. The real human being
all this time, with his head safely on his shoulders,
had brought himself to the comfortable conclusion
that everything was for the best; and making an investment
in ink, paper, and steel pens, had opened his long-disused
writing desk, and was again a literary man.

Now it was that the lucubrations of my ancient predecessor,
Mr. Surveyor Pue, came into play. Rusty through
long idleness, some little space was requisite before
my intellectual machinery could be brought to work
upon the tale with an effect in any degree satisfactory.
Even yet, though my thoughts were ultimately much
absorbed in the task, it wears, to my eye, a stern
and sombre aspect: too much ungladdened by genial
sunshine; too little relieved by the tender and familiar
influences which soften almost every scene of nature
and real life, and undoubtedly should soften every
picture of them. This uncaptivating effect is
perhaps due to the period of hardly accomplished revolution,
and still seething turmoil, in which the story shaped
itself. It is no indication, however, of a lack
of cheerfulness in the writer’s mind: for
he was happier while straying through the gloom of
these sunless fantasies than at any time since he